Poetry Contest

Some famous poet who was probably well-enough regarded to be deemed sagacious in the matter once said that some poems must be written but should not be read (and this was, I think, well before country-western music was born). Apparently, the government of Pakistan agrees.

Now I'm well aware that this story has been all over the Internet this week; but here at Daily Rev we find ways to add a new wrinkle to worn fabric. So if you hit the link above, you can read the original poem that lionizes the Crawford Coward (the only part of the story that really scared me was the bit from the Paki government about how the person responsible for inserting the verse into the school textbook would be "disciplined"—that, in Pakistan, could range from being hung by the thumbs to evisceration in the presence of one's family). Then, compare it with the alternative version created by my friend and future Gitmo detainee, Guptilla the Hun. Here it is:

Pathetic is how to describe the job he does
Retrospection is whats needed for his birth
Everywhere he touches its disaster
Subtlety and intelligence is in dearth
Is everyone in this country sleeping?
Destroying this great country
Everywhere because of him the blood dripping
Never has such a moron had so much power
Tarnishing the image and taking it even lower

God help us all
Even HE must be thinking
Over and over he has created humans
Repeated practice and still this effort was nothing but sinking
Great Lord, is this a demon
Evangelical is what some think of him

Whatever he does is on a whim

Best to think we have only 3 more years
Unless we have something more to fear
Save this country is what I pray
His moronic ways have to end some day

The Condi-Woman's Cant

By now most of you would have heard or read Condi's spin on the torture camps in Eastern Europe (see quotes below). Meanwhile, as the Secretary of Slick does the runway in Deutschland, the CIA is busy as hell clearing those camps out—according to ABC, which has been one of the prime media cheerleaders for this war from day one.

Now for a fast but thorough keelhauling of the mass media's mass swallow of Condissimulation, visit Eric Alterman's blog here. We may only add here that Condi's "extreme rendition is good" pabulum was (aside from being wreathed with lies) further alienating to our closest allies across the pond. Here are a few of her talking points:

--The United States has respected -- and will continue to respect -- the sovereignty of other countries.

-- The United States does not transport, and has not transported, detainees from one country to another for the purpose of interrogation using torture.

-- The United States does not use the airspace or the airports of any country for the purpose of transporting a detainee to a country where he or she will be tortured.

The tenor of these remarks and their condescending Rovespeak style is capably exposed here. We need to insist that the mass media cut through the appearances and compare the spin to the objective reality—that this Saks' Fifth Avenue, through-the-lorgnettes condescension has the effect of estranging our allies in the struggle against terror; of compounding the problem and calling disaster closer; of making our so-called democratic government a laughing stock among both friends and enemies; and of further endangering our troops in Iraq and everywhere else, for that matter.

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Upcoming: I'll soon be obtaining another exclusive interview with ancient Chinese philosopher and worldly curmudgeon, Lao Tzu, to record his comments on our current geopolitical and domestic angst. (For the first interview, look here).

Also of note, check back next week for a Daily Rev holiday celebration of technology: "Geek Week." We'll be reviewing tech gear and trends from this year past and looking ahead to what may or may not be in 2006. Mac-tel vs. Vista; OLED or not-yet; googling yahoos in abundance; and the skinny on free or near-free wifi—this and more in Daily Rev's Geek Week, beginning Monday, December 12.

Life Lessons in a Time of War, 6

Growth is not upward movement, but outward, from the core. Escape is not the way of freedom—return is. Change is not the way of nature—transformation is. Conformity is not the path to peace—independence is.

Priests teach obedience, and call it love; tyrants demand slavery, and call it loyalty. Pedants will program the code of death into you, and call the result good behavior. Separate from them all; look past their dead, white eyes and tell them No. Free your heart from the chains of ice that they would wrap around your true self. Turn away; connect with the quantum reality of life, and the snake of obedience will slither back, stripped bare and cold, to its corporate Masters.

They will tell you that weapons make peace, that swords and AK-47s can be plowshares too. They will teach you to make conflict your friend, and understanding your enemy. They will say that whatever cannot be killed can be bought: if you cannot annihilate it, then you had better own it. They will remind you, constantly, that your body is a vessel of sin and shame.

These are the teachings of death: the moment you accept them, you will begin to rot. So remember that your body, like the earth you dwell upon, is 75% water: the essence of perpetual baptism is already within you. Wash the mud of death out of every body cell, daily: let your liquid light pour through you, cleansing and protecting, and you will be a stranger to fear. No government will enslave you, no ruler oppress you, no priest deceive you, no pedant betray you.

Be careful every day; keep caution alive, for it is the soil in which Love grows and flourishes.

Kill it or Buy It

In his truly groundbreaking book, A Brief History of Everything, philosopher Ken Wilber gets down to bare basics about the difference between men and women. Here’s a quote, and I’ll follow that up with my own adaptation of Wilber’s insight, applied to the Bush administration:

Studies on testosterone—in the laboratory, cross-culturally, embryonically, and even on what happens when women are given testosterone injections for medical reasons—all point to a simple conclusion. I don’t mean to be crude, but it appears that testosterone basically has two, and only two, major drives: fuck it or kill it. (pp. 3-4).

Now in Washington for the past five years, we’ve witnessed a phenomenon that may well drive Mr. Wilber back to the intellectual drawing board. We all know how the testosterone dichotomy translates into Bush-ese, because we’ve seen it in action time and again—most recently in the fascinating purchase of “Iraqi journalism”. Kill it or buy it.

First, you get good and fed up with journalism as it’s practiced by anyone outside the intellectual embeddedment of FOX News. Then, you have a frank and intimate discussion with your closest international political ally about the possibility of bombing Al Jazeera headquarters. But when it’s pointed out to you that such an action would amount to an attack on as friendly a nation as you’re going to find amid the deserts of the oil suppliers, you have second thoughts. You can’t kill it…so you decide to buy it. Thus, we encounter news of the Pentagon Marching Chowder Society for Truth in Journalism—paying an Iraqi version of Amstrong Williams to post your half-baked propaganda for readers of the Baghdad Times and the Fallujah Post.

The difficulty, of course, comes where the two impulses converge in a violent fit of capitalist lust —as Mr. Wilber himself points out in his book. “Men sometimes fuse and confuse these two drives, with fuck it and kill it dangerously merging, which rarely has happy consequences, as women are more than willing to point out” (could he have been thinking of Maureen Dowd, I wonder?). Then it’s time for a little face-saving damage control, Pentagon-style:

The articles were designed to counter "misinformation and propaganda by an enemy intent on discrediting the Iraqi government and the Coalition, and who are taking every opportunity to instill fear and intimidate the Iraqi people," the statement said.

Now kill-it-or-buy-it is taken to a wholly different plane: it’s the information war, the battle for hearts and minds all over again, merely in a different guise. America is once again spending its resources, its taxpaying citizens’ hard-earned dollars, on a cruise missile of Truth that will defend the Iraqi people, just as our 500 pound bombs and white phosphorous have defended them (never mind the tens of thousands of innocent dead—you can’t make an omelet without breaking eggs, you know).

So what’s the answer to this dilemma? Where do we draw the line between truth and spin on the information battleground? Some Congressmen are beginning to ask this question. While that process gains whatever momentum the neocon majority allows it, perhaps we can ask Ken Wilber what his answer would be:

Where the traditional sex roles of male and female were once perfectly necessary and appropriate, they are today becoming increasingly outmoded, narrow, and cramped. And so both men and women are struggling for ways to transcend their old roles, without—and this is the tricky part—without simply erasing them. Evolution always transcends and includes, incorporates and goes beyond. And so males will always have a base of testosterone drivenness—fuck it or kill it—but those drives can be taken up and worked into more appropriate modes of behavior. Men will always, to some degree, be incredibly driven to break limits, push the envelope,  go all out, wildly, insanely…and women will always have a base of relational being…So for both men and women, it’s transcend and include, transcend and include.

Great idea, Mr. Wilber…but evolution takes too much time for our purposes here. My prescription would be similar, but faster: transcend and impeach.

Image is Truth (and Ignorance is Strength)

I am constantly inspired by my government's clear example, which it sets before us every day while most of us scarcely notice.

But that's advertising for you: it's not supposed to hit you upside the face, but rather penetrate your subconscious. Fortunately, I spend time every evening looking, examining, studying what our government is really doing, and so I am able to benefit from its subtle role modeling.

My case in point today involves a financial problem I'm trying to deal with right now. I won't get into the sordid details (they'd be all too familiar to many of you); but I'm faced with bonafide insolvency on a number of fronts, and I don't know what to do. Last night, I was given my inspiration: let Image be my Truth, and I will be Saved.

I watched the President, you see—how his image was quite literally surrounded by signs bearing the words "Victory" and "Plan". What he said, of course, was the same noxious drivel that we've all heard for years now. But that image was something. Of course he has a plan for victory: there were about 673 signs—wallpaper, mind you—all over and around him that clearly said so: a camera couldn't get a picture of him without one of those images appearing above, below, in the background—until I thought I saw the phrase planted on his forehead!

So here's my plan: I'm going to make some signs that all say things like, "I am Wealthy," and "All My Bills Paid!" I'll hold a press conference for all my creditors, surrounded by those signs; and I'll have a a team of photographers and video crews shooting me from every angle, and every subsequent image will have a "Plan for Solvency" or "Financial Freedom" logo in burnished, patriotic gold over blue. In no time, the letters, phone calls, levy notices, and reminder emails will all stop, and my credit rating will be in the Outstanding range before the mid-term elections dawn.

Now, back to the President: maybe someone with more time and patience than I can look back over old photographs of Presidential speeches and press conferences, and see whether past executives have seen the need for such imagistic shillery to support their oratory. Meanwhile, I have to post this comment, which I received from our occasional contributor, Red Hook Red—I think he speaks for us all.

I wonder if all the people who voted for Bush and the GOP because they stood for "values" have had enough of those values yet: arrogantly blundering into a war that has become an unwinnable hornet's nest without any understanding of Iraq's culture or thought about what needed to be done once the shooting stopped (if it ever stopped), plunging the nation into debt, promoting incompetent cronies and hacks to positions of vital importance, botching and then forgetting about the Gulf Coast, promoting a foreign policy that is based on the same totalitarian behavior that we profess to deplore, spitting in the eye of science and reason by promoting "intelligent design" as preferred curriculum, sneering at conservation while letting oil companies write our national energy policy - which only guarantees that middle eastern oll sheiks will continue to have us by the shorthairs while the globe continues to melt and hurl catastrophic storms at us, doing nothing to solve the health care crisis, encouraging corporations to plunder employee penision funds and walk away from any obligations, making you feel like a traitor for questioning any of this....I could go on, but I'm getting nauseous.

—Red Hook Red